FIFA organizing Commission of Inquiry into F.F.B. funds

Ruperto Vicente

Football Federation of Belize president, Ruperto Vicente says that FIFA has moved to organize an ethics committee which will act as a commission of inquiry into monies, Vicente says, that are unaccounted for at the F.F.B. Weeks ago, Vicente said that the F.F.B. is broke despite significant financial contributions from FIFA annually. At the time, he said there were no plans to launch an investigation into the financial affairs of the past administration, but now he says FIFA has forwarded records of disbursements to F.F.B. to the tune of half a million US dollars in 2011. Vicente, however, says that a forensic audit of the organization’s finances will prove exceedingly difficult since there is no paper trail left behind by the Chimilio Administration.

Ruperto Vicente, President, F.F.B.

“The financial situation remains the same. We’ve not been able to get over the hump but we will because we’ve received documents from FIFA assuring us that they will be sending us some monies on April 18th, you know. But they’ve also unveiled to us some new things that we did not know about financially, you know, and we’re going to be investigating those. I cannot give you details of those now because of the nature of those discoveries that FIFA has revealed to us but we will be investigating those and FIFA is going to assist us in doing all of this.”

Isani Cayetano

“My understanding is that FIFA, as the umbrella organization, had extended certain amount of monies to the FFB under the chairmanship of Dr. Chimilio, some of which is not accounted for at this point. Can you tell me if a forensic auditor will be brought in to look at the status and the actual state of affairs within the account itself to have some starting point for any investigation?”

Ruperto Vicente

“Certainly, we have received from FIFA, and of course there are documents as well at the federation, there was a financial report or a yearly report submitted at the last congress of the Football Federation of Belize when the elections were held, you know. There are records showing that five hundred and fifty thousand U.S dollars were sent to Belize for the Goal Project and other things but FIFA wants that amount of money audited and so a company in Belize has been contracted by FIFA to do the audit and they’ve been in contact with me but I have informed them that we do not have any paper trail to help them start their audit and so we’re going to have to go to the banks and ask for a history of the accounts in order to get them started on this audit because FIFA is very much interested in having that audit done by the sixteenth of April which is Monday, you know. So we won’t be able to get it done by Monday but I’ve asked them for an extension and they’ve given us that extension so we’re going to be doing that audit.”

Chimilio told us by phone this afternoon that since Vicente took over the F.F.B., he has not been given the opportunity present handing over notes and that in fact, an audit is ongoing.

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